Desert tele­scope stakes out su­per­mas­sive black hole

PARIS—First pos­tu­lated more than 230 years ago, black holes have been ex­ten­sively re­searched, fre­quently de­picted, even fea­tured in sci-fi films.

We’ve all seen the artists’ im­pres­sions and read of their rav­en­ous star­gob­bling feasts.But here’s the thing... science is still not 100 per­cent sure what they look like, how they be­have or even that they ex­ist.

Te­le­scopes have never seen a black hole, and the world’s bright­est minds are un­able to rec­on­cile their core char­ac­ter­is­tics with some of the bedrock laws of na­ture.—APP